Survey of the Lands of the Bible - Free MOOC

Interested in the lands of the Bible? Do you enjoy history or maps or archaeology? Planning a trip to any of the lands that are part of biblical history?

I would like to invite anyone who is interested to participate in a free, online course I am offering, “Survey of the Lands of the Bible.” It is being offered as a MOOC (= Massive Open Online Course) starting in September, 2014 through Gettysburg Seminary where I teach. Students are able to participate as much or little as they wish. There is no cost, and buying the course textbook is optional. I believe that the course provides not only a geographical overview, but it also serves as a good Bible history survey that informs the modern situation. Students cannot receive credit for the course from the seminary, but it is a great learning opportunity.

The course will be conducted in English, but I’m hoping for an international audience.

There really are no costs and no risks to register for the course. There is more information HERE.

You can also check this PDF course brochure available HERE.

If you have any questions, please let me know. I hope to see some of you online!

Visual Links to Education Faves

AllMyFaves: Very nice visual display of links to Education favorites. There is also a general page of links and other pages for Canada or the UK, travel, shopping, etc. The links associated with the Religion subcategory are pretty decent
[HT: Downes]

Catching up - Part 1

With over 100 items saved up in my Google Reader, it's time to either get them out or declare bankruptcy. So, let me simply point to a bunch of stuff I found interesting enough to save that is related either to biblical studies or education.

Jane's E-Learning always has lots of good stuff. Here are some she has highlighted:

• Lovely Charts for making flowcharts, sitemaps, etc.
• A Guide to Social Learning now available as a "social resource."
• Academic Earth.org with "1000s of video lectures from the world's top scholars;" include Christine Hayes (Yale) OT Intro
• PhotoPeach is a free online tool to make slideshows; kind of like MS Photostory, but it allows for viewers to add comments
• exploratree " is a free web resource where you can access a library of ready-made interactive thinking guides, print them, edit them or make your own. You can share them and work on them in groups too." This one looks interesting...
• ScreenToaster: If you don't have Camtasia Studio for doing screen captures, you can use the free Jing app, but ScreenToaster which is also free might be even simpler to use. Easy signup, choose fullscreen or area recording, audio or not, webcam or not, and go. Files can be uploaded to ScreenToaster or YouTube or downloaded as AVI or SWF. Very nice.
• MixedInk: "MixedInk takes a fresh approach to collaborative writing. It's a fun, democratic and elegant way for people to weave their best ideas together. (Plus, it's free!)" I could see using something like this in developing course syllabi or defining desired outcomes. Want to give it a try? You will need to create a free account, but then come HERE and say why you think learning biblical Greek is important.

Shoot... I just cleared out 14 entries, but in the time it took to put this together, another 10 came in. Still over 100 in my reader... That's it for now.

Just some interesting stuff to check...

This is a catch-up posting of a bunch of stuff...

SEARCH ENGINES: Note that I have an earlier post where I have organized and commented upon a selection of the better search engines. I have now included Spific and Yahoo Glue I describe below.

Searchme

View in searchme: full | lite

Spific: This looks to be a very nice search engine utilizing Google Custom search. You can start by your own keywords or by suggested topics. You can also limit your search to various categories or timeframes. Once you run your search, you can further refine it by limiting to blogs, videos, forums, stores, etc. The Spific homepage has a short video to demonstrate how it works. [HT: Jane's]
Yahoo Glue Beta: It's basically Yahoo search with some helpful organization. I did a search for "Koine Greek," and it produced a page grouped into: a Wikipedia entry, Images, Yahoo Answers, YouTube videos, and, of course, a Sponsored Links box. There are some search queries it does not understand, in which case it will offer to search on regular Yahoo. I tried another search for "Bible software" and it produced a page with: a news box (that was not relevant), a Google Blog search (with two of four links to Logos blog posts), more irrelevant results from thestreet.com, and, of course, a Sponsored Links box. VERDICT: possibly helpful [HT: Jane's]

Gmail tricks: Now this might be useful. If you have a gmail account, and your address is, e.g., abdefg@gmail.com, it turns out that you can add periods anywhere in your name, and the email will still get to you. (a.bcdefg@gmail.com or ab.cdefg@gmail.com or etc.) You can also use the plus sign after your name and add any text you want as well, and it will still get to you. (abcdefg+anything@gmail.com) Use this trick to help organize mail you send to yourself or when you subscribe to sites. Read more about about this trick and how to use it HERE.

LectureFox: Some time ago I noted that a number of universities are posting lectures online for free. LectureFox has accumulated these lectures into a searchable database. Search for "testament" to get the Yale OT lecture or "religion" to get philosophy of religion lectures from Edingburgh and Vanderbilt. [HT: makeuseof and while you here, check out some of the other sites he lists. Teachers should be aware of the use of "fake files" and the plagiarism stuff. The site does also offer--after a free subscription--a collection of useful shortcut sheets for Firefox, Windows, Google, IE, etc.]

Top Tools for 2009 from Jane's: Jane Hart always has interesting stuff, and here is her list of promising tools for 2009. I can confirm that I like Cooliris and Sliderocket. I'll have to check out some of the others. Also check out her review of 2008, part 1 and part 2.

Logos Related Stuff: Logos has been promoting a free Kutless MP3 download (the song is decent enough to be worth taking up space on your harddrive) as a way to generate publicity for and interest in their Bible Study Magazine. Check it out. Also worth visiting is their ThePastor'sLibrary.com which I found out about in one of their emailings. It is indeed directed to pastors to help them work with their congregations in developing a library. It is, as is to be expected, a promotional tool for Logos software, but there are some interesting findings in its Survey, some helps for pastors in working with their congregations in Budgeting Resources, comments on Library Development, the value of Bible Software, and some Recommendations including links to some good Resources.

ESV Study Bible for OliveTree BibleReader: It is now available and if you hurry (by 2009.01.04), there is a 15% discount.

Marking with Voice Tools: I've tried this in the past, namely, grading papers by adding voice annotations to digitally submitted docs. This blog post has some helpful hints and check the comments as well. [HT: Steve's]

Enough for now. More to come...

Zotero, Making Digital Count, Collaboration, Future of Education

As Tim notes on SansBlogue, Zotero is good to go for SBL styles.

Follow the links on this post for discussion on the nature of digital scholarship and whether and how it should 'count' in an academic setting. It's a good followup to couple of earlier posts on this blog here and here.

A good survey of online collaboration tools with brief descriptions is here.

Making sense of new technologies has a couple of good items:

• My previous post on mindmapping got some info here, but scroll down a ways and be sure to check out the Michael Wesch video on Media Literacy. (Direct video link here.) It's over an hour, but it is pretty interesting. In particular, about half way through, he shows what the online components of his courses are. (Here is the start page.) Here is the link to his course wiki using Wetpaint. This gave me some good ideas of how I might incorporate wikis in my own courses.
• Also on this page is this notice:
  

  BC Campus and Common Wealth of Learning are offering a free download of their book Education for a digital world (the book can also be purchased). The book covers significant topics, including: impact of instructional technology, implementing technology, preparing online courses, e-learning in action, and engagement and communication.

eLearning Tools

As part of my work with biblical studies and technological tools, I am always keeping an ways I can use and apply the technology in my courses. I've listed some resources previously, but here is a sampling of some of the stuff I check out:

• Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies: Directory of Learning Tools: This is a great place to start. 2039 tools (1452 of them free) are organized and linked. If you thinking of trying something, someone has probably already thought of it, and the link is here.
• iberry.com - The Academic Porthole: ("As the first academic porthole, we describe our site as a small but cheerful window in the side of the Higher Education ship for purposes of illumination and enlightenment.") A somewhat newer site that offers an "Open Courseware Directory and Higher Education Resources."
• Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day: Jane Hart is connected with the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (cf. above), and her blog is a widely linked source for new developments in E-Learning. For example, today (2007.12.20) she links to a very helpful, free PDF download, "162 Tips and Tricks for Working with E-Learning Tools."
• Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Another widely cited blog; mainly works with younger students, but the resources she describes and uses are helpful for all.

I've also been working on incorporating blogs as one of my course components. I had mixed but mainly disappointing results using them this past semester in a couple courses (on Experiencing the Gospel of Mark and Opening the Scriptures: The OT in the NT), and part of it was simply that the students had no experience in blogging. I spent way too much time on the technology than I wanted to do, but this report on Teens and Social Media from the Pew Internet and American Life Project confirms how young people are indeed using multiple forms of technologies for conversation and sharing content. Course blogging will become not just helpful but essential as a conversation tool. I am also considering how I might incorporate wikis as well, and here are some of the places I'm checking:

• Education Wikis (free): This site/tool is intended for educators wanting to use wikis.
• Teaching with Wikis: A blog posting with some interesting suggestions on using wikis.
• Using Wikis in Education: A directory of a variety of wiki tools.

Some other things I'm considering:

• Second Life: There are a lot of educators and institutions committing a lot of time and money into this virtual world. I've been playing around in it a bit, and I can see where this might be going, but I don't know that I want to invest my time into it. (BTW, if you want some experience of SL without actually downloading the software and creating your avatar, etc, HERE is a 44 minute video by ABC of Australia that is quite a good intro to Second Life. A bit heavy on the business and sex stuff and a bit short on the educational resources, but it will give you a good idea of the pros/cons of a virtual world.) There are some interesting installations of universities and libraries and online courses, and churches are getting into the act as well.
• circaVie: A site that allows users to create their own free timelines where comments, pics, and video can be arranged.
• Voicethread - Start with an image, doc, or video. Users then respond to that material by leaving voice (using mic or telephone), text, audio, or video comments. It is free, and the idea is that it becomes a collaborative learning space.

Other ideas? I'd be glad to hear what you are doing!